


walk around with both legs

by resistate



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: April 2019, F/M, Friendship, Jealousy, Light Angst, Softness, just platonic shit, low-key domestic shit, media days, mentions of other relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-30
Updated: 2019-04-30
Packaged: 2020-02-10 11:53:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18659908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/resistate/pseuds/resistate
Summary: She keeps him alive. April 2019.





	walk around with both legs

**Author's Note:**

> Huge thanks to Jo for helping with the hockey and to Nicole, ariel and úna for beta reading; any remaining mistakes are down to me.

//

It’s dark and cold when they leave the Wanderluxe event. Scott’s glad to have gone; he’s always happy to support a great cause and there’s none greater than helping children live. Still, when Tessa had found him and asked if he wanted to share a car back to the hotel, he’d been more than willing to call it a night. He’d been lingering by the stage, hoping the noise of the band would help keep him awake and gloss over the fact that people he didn’t know kept making the same conversation over and over again. They don’t even care about his and Tessa’s work, is the thing; just their cachet. He’s happy to talk to people who are fans of his and Tessa’s skating; it’s a small way he can give back to everyone who’s supported him throughout his career. He’s not so happy to talk to people who are just fans of his fame, though he pretty much has to pretend he is when he’s at these things.

He doesn’t have to pretend now, waiting outside with Tessa. The wind has died down but not by much. Clouds dust the sky high overhead and Scott’s hand rests briefly on Tessa’s back as she climbs into the car. Then Scott climbs in and Tessa gives the driver the address of their hotel. Her pink coat and her red dress are bright spots of colour in the dark backseat. The red arrow on her pink coat looks like a lifeline. Scott reaches out and traces it with a fingertip.

Tessa turns her head toward Scott and her earring sways against her neck in a long slow curve. She reaches out a hand and Scott slides from the window to the middle seat, closing the gap. He shifts so he can rest his head on Tessa’s shoulder, just lightly, leaving space between them, but then she curls slightly into his side, a perfect fit.

It’s been a long day. They’d had the Hello Fresh shoot in the morning and the fundraising event just now, and in the afternoon they’d been at the National Ballet. When he’d got in the car had smelled faintly and unpleasantly of cigarette smoke, but now all he can smell is Tessa’s new perfume. Scott looks out the windshield at the city as they travel north, away from the lake. Toronto has that crowded but spacious feel that cities here have. He grew up in a small town, and he’s been all over the world with his work, but he’s come around to appreciating a good Canadian city.

‘You’re quiet,’ Tessa observes.

Scott could say the same of Tessa. Neither of them have said anything since the car pulled up. Scott’s tired, the kind of delicious drowsiness he knows means he’ll sleep well tonight, and the driver has the heat cranked up way too high, and he’s been sprawled next to Tessa, sloughing off being Scott Moir, going back to being just Scott.

He’s been playing the day back in his head anyway, certain parts getting caught and stuck, getting more than their fair share of airplay. ‘Just thinking,’ he says.

‘About what?’ Tessa’s voice is heavy with drowsiness.

‘Today,’ he says.

He feels Tessa shift slightly. ‘What about today?’

Scott hesitates, because there are plenty of things that he could say about today besides what’s on his mind. Positive things. Uncomplicated things.

What he says is, ‘I didn’t like the way he was touching you.’

There’s a long pause. Tessa doesn’t say any of the things she could say, like _what are you talking about_ , or _he’s married_ , or _you have a girlfriend_. Then she says, ‘I noticed,’ in her quiet, clear just-Tessa voice.

Her tone is neutral. Scott shifts so he can see her face. She’s looking straight at him without any judgement.

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah, you did that thing you do,’ Tessa says. She scrunches her face into an exaggerated scowl and crosses her arms. Scott laughs. He absolutely has never looked like that, but it’s funny: Tessa pretending to be Scott being jealous.

Being jealous doesn’t fit how he thinks of himself as a person. He doesn’t like it. Tessa’s not his, she’s not anyone’s; she’s her own person and she deserves to do what she likes. Enough people are out here giving her grief for her every move without Scott helping. And he knows it’s stupid, but he just can’t stop thinking about it. Guillaume’s hands on Tessa, moving Tessa, moving with Tessa.

Tessa unfolds her arms and her expression relaxes, shifts from fake Scott to real Tessa. Real Tessa leans against the window, studying real Scott.

There was a time, Scott knows, when he wouldn’t have said anything to Tessa at all, or when he would have made his feelings Tessa’s problem instead of his. There was a time when Tessa wouldn’t have given him a chance to explain, when she would have made assumptions. They’ve grown up together, though. They’ve changed together.

Tessa lets him not say anything, but the difference between then and now is that now he tells Tessa what’s going on, even when he doesn’t want to. It’s better, in the long run, for them both.

‘He touches you like—like he’s danced with you for twenty years. Like he knows how to touch you because it’s his job to know.’

‘Twenty-one years,’ says Tessa. The drowsiness is gone from her voice. ‘Scott—’

‘—Twenty-one years,’ says Scott. ‘It’s not.’

‘Oh god, no; of course not.’ She holds out an arm. ‘Sweetie, of course not. It’s your job.’

Scott leans into the comfort of Tessa’s presence. He leans into the reassurance he needs that it’s still him and Tess against the world, together. ‘Is that—is that all?’ Tessa asks.

‘Thank you,’ Scott says into her neck, because it’s all that he can say. He can’t say he thought about it getting ready for tonight, warm water sluicing over his shoulders and down his back. He can’t say that he thought about his hands replacing Guillaume’s hands; he can’t say that he thought about a wedding ring on his finger, the cool metal pressing into the warm, strong skin of Tessa’s stomach. He can’t say that he let his thoughts run away with him, just the once, until they reached their inevitable conclusion, and he did.

Tessa’s his best friend, not his girlfriend, and he can’t say any of those things. She wouldn’t hate him even if he did, probably. Probably she would just be sad.

It’s even colder out when they leave the car, more like winter still than spring. Scott walks Tessa to the door of her hotel room. He’s about to turn and head to his own room when Tessa stops him with a hand on his arm. ‘Do you want to come in and watch the highlights?’

The Lightning had won 3-1 over the Leafs while he and Tessa had been smiling and smiling and having their photos taken. Even though Toronto’s already clinched, their loss isn’t something Scott particularly wants to revisit. He hesitates. He feels like he used to spend half his life in hotel rooms with Tessa, but standing here a year and change after they stopped competing, he doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t know what to say, and his hesitation must be obvious by now.

‘My pyjamas have hockey pucks on them,’ Tessa says. She’s facing him, key card in hand, but she’s looking at something on the wall over his left shoulder. She’s not looking at him.

‘Well, I mean, hockey pucks,’ says Scott.

Inside, Tessa plucks the remote off the desk by the window and hands it to him. She heads to the bathroom, presumably to get changed.

Scott kicks off his shoes and loosens his tie. He settles himself on the bed, because there’s nowhere else to sit, and puts on the Winnipeg-Colorado game. Colorado’s been having a surprisingly good season, and they’ll have highlights from other games at intermission, and he’s in no rush. He’s watching a replay of Marner’s third-period goal when Tessa emerges. She’s taken off her makeup; when she comes closer he can see the freckles dusting her face and throat.

‘As promised,’ Tessa says. He doesn’t know what she means at first. He used to spend half his life in hotel rooms with Tessa, watching TV or partying with friends or talking about stupid shit, just the two of them, or doing things they don’t do anymore, just the two of them. Tessa’s smile is soft and sleepy. He wonders sometimes if he knows what anything means anymore. He notices, belatedly, that Tessa’s pyjama pants and long-sleeved shirt are dotted with small black hockey pucks.

‘Sticks, too,’ Scott says, because there are little beige hockey sticks on Tessa’s pyjamas, complete with tape and everything. Tessa laughs and pulls back the covers from the side of the bed Scott’s not sitting on and climbs in. She’s looking at him again and the fist he hadn’t even realised was around his heart unclenches. Tessa’s glasses are on top of her book on the nightstand and she puts them on, adjusts them so they don’t pinch the bridge of her nose. She watches a couple of minutes of highlights before she removes the bookmark from her book. The cover is bold blues and greens, dotted with houses and paths that seem to Scott to lead everywhere.

It should probably feel strange, his being here, but it doesn’t. He feels like this is one of the places he belongs, watching the Leafs lose in slow-motion while Tessa turns pages in her book just as slowly. He loves how she puts as much care and attention into reading for pleasure as she does everything else. He’d watched her at the fundraiser, decked out in Air Canada corporate colours, gazing at everyone who spoke to her as if she truly was interested in what they had to say. Tessa’s interested in everything, Scott knows. He loves the care and attention she puts into everything she does.

Ten minutes into the third period Tessa lies down, hair fanning across her pillow before she gathers it and tucks it neatly over her shoulder. Her bent knee presses into Scott’s thigh through the layers of pyjama pants and hotel comforter and dress pants, just for a moment, before Tessa tugs the covers around herself. She says something and Scott fumbles for the remote, pressing mute. The light from the TV gives her skin a blueish-white cast.

‘I missed that,’ he says.

‘I missed you,’ Tessa says, voice soft and drowsy with sleep.

Scott sets down the remote and brushes a stray piece of hair behind Tessa’s ear. ‘Missed you too, T,’ he says. He leaves his hand there, resting lightly on Tessa’s head. Touching Tessa makes him feel necessary, but it also makes him feel grounded.

Tessa sighs and shuffles closer, and he feels the light, barely-there pressure of her knee against his thigh again.

He should probably go.

‘You can keep watching the game,’ Tessa says. ‘I mean, if you want. It helps me sleep.’

Scott looks at her, concern beginning to prickle. ‘I thought you were sleeping better,’ he says.

‘I am.’

‘Yeah?’

Tessa nods.

‘You know you can always talk to me, right? About anything.’ He needs her to feel as secure in the two of them, in whatever they are to each other, as he does.

‘Yeah,’ Tessa says. She bumps her knee lightly against his leg.

He unmutes the TV but turns the volume lower. Tessa’s breathing becomes soft and regular, her knee still pressed against Scott’s leg. She falls asleep well before the end of the third period; the faint, familiar rasp of her breaths just audible over the scrape of skates on ice. Scott is still beside her when the Avalanche win in overtime to clinch their playoff spot, fingers in her hair, thumb resting lightly against her neck, the inexorable pulse of her blood under her skin keeping him alive.

//

**Author's Note:**

> Title from ‘I’ll Believe in Anything’ by Wolf Parade. 
> 
> The novel that Tessa’s reading is _Little Fires Everywhere_ by Celeste Ng.
> 
> Find me on Twitter: @/mfparaph


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